Word.ws English Dictionary

at play

at play prepositional phrase: playing, in the process of playing.

Prepositional phrase

  1. Playing, in the process of playing.
    • There are children at play in the street.
  2. (figuratively) In action.
    • Another opposition force at play is the Move Forward party – hugely popular among young Thais for its radical reform agenda.2023 May 14, Heather Chen, Kocha Olarn, “Polls close in Thailand as opposition takes on kingdom’s conservative cliques”, in CNN
    Synonyms:
    at work

Synonyms of at play

Questions about at play

What does at play mean?
At play means playing, in the process of playing.
What part of speech is at play?
At play is a prepositional phrase.

Words near at play in the dictionary

  1. at pace
  2. at pains
  3. at peace
  4. at peace with
  5. at places
  6. at play
  7. at pleasure
  8. at present
  9. at rack and manger
  10. at random
  11. at rest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: at play (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “at play.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/at_play. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.